3. Ceriops Am., Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. 1:363. 1838.
ABDUL GHAFOOR
Small to moderate-sized trees or shrubs with buttress of appressed stilt roots and pneumatophores; bark grey-brown. Leaves opposite decussate, closely borne towards the twig apices, petiolate, obovate-elliptic, entire, leathery and glabrous, free from black dots beneath; stipules lanceolate. Inflorescence of (2-) 4-many-flowered, subsessile to shortly pedunculate, axillary, condensed cymes. Flowers white, c. 1 cm or so long, perigynous, disc cupular, 10-12-sinuate, fleshy; bracteoles partially united into a cup-like structure with ovate lobes. Sepals 5 (-6), borne on a short hypanthium, ovate, acuminate, patent or reflexed in fruit, leathery. Petals as many as sepals, membranous, free or occasionally coherent at the base by hooked-hairy margins, truncate to emarginate and clavate appendaged or fringed at the tips. Stamens 10 (-12), borne in sinuations of the disc in antipetalous pairs; anthers dithecous, oblong or linear, obtuse-acuminate, shorter to longer than the filaments, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary tricarpellary, syncarpous, half inferior, projecting beyond the hypanthium as a fleshy cone, 3-loculed at least in the upper part, locules biovulate; style simple, thickened below; stigma obscurely trifid or simple. Fruit ovoid, unilocular, monospermous, coriaceous berry. Seeds viviparous, pendulous; embryo exalbuminous, radicle and hypocotyl angular, clavate and tapering to the apex.
Species 2, distributed as part of mangrove formations in N. Australia, S.E. Asia, Burma, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and E. Africa.
